Adventures of the Rope Warrior (Snark)

Making something that’s boring but beneficial entincing to kids is a tricky job, not helped by how a lot of edutainment makers seem to severely underestimate kids’ ability to tell when they’re being led on. Certainly I have fond memories of some of the edutainment shows of my youth, but one approach that seems almost impossible to pull off is when the makers try to weave their moral into a story of grand adventure to grab young viewers’ attention. Most of the time you get a Captain Planet and the Planeteers, something remembered more for the absurdity of its presentation than the positive values it contained.

Which is why I feel a little bad saying that David Fisher’s pair of books are pretty dumb. But then, books about a guy who gets the strength to save the universe from alien drug dealers and obesity-promoting corporate bosses by jumping rope, well…If anybody’d ever heard of this, Captain Planet’s place in internet history might in trouble. Or at least Drug Avengers's.

I say I feel bad because the benefits of jumping rope are something I’m inclined to think he truly believes in. The first of these Rope Warrior books came out in 1996, but in August of this very year he put out a new book of jump rope tricks. I do believe this is an entire lifestyle for Fisher, and yeah, nearly all of us could stand to spend more time looking after our health. Still, if you write a morality tale, and you name two negative characters Maury and Ima Whiner, you do it to yourself, really.

It also doesn’t help how both books start off with this:

Granted it’s talking about feats like using a jump rope to swing on something or twirling it to deflect projectiles. The kind of stuff people only do in high fantasy, and without which the jump rope would have no place in the narrative. Still, it sounds really weird to set out to tell the reader jumping rope is totally awesome while telling them not to do any of the things the role model the story gives does with his jump rope.

But I’ve delayed talking about the story itself long enough. In 2086 (90 years after the work is published rather than the usual even 100, cute), the Roper family are the first humans to live on another planet in an experimental station on Mars. They’re really into fitness. So much so that young Charles got the nickname “Skip” for his love of skipping rope.

Obviously happy family in action plot. DEAD.

But one day their idyllic existence of getting up at 4:45 AM to jump rope every morning is shattered as evil aliens from the planet Keebar (Keebar??) attack the Mars station and try to perform some kind of insidious operation on Skip’s parents. When it fails, their leader, Varco, guns the Ropers down and blows up their emergency escape ship, leaving young Skip alone and jumping rope for years, awaiting rescue.

But eventually rescue does come: an old friend of the Ropers comes by to check on them after 15 years of no regular reports (yeah, really). A friend who’s since joined the “Intergalactical Drug Police,” but I had a lot more fun just calling them “the Space Narcs.” Anyway when Skip finds out the Space Narcs are on the trail of the guy who killed his parents, who runs an interplanetary drug ring, he wants in too. And because he’s the main character, he gets in.

It turns out the Space Narcs’ next big operation is to destroy an isolated but heavily-defended drug factory. As opposed to someplace in the middle of civilization but not sticking out like a frigging sore thumb, but whatever. We’re talking about villains only one step up from ones who chop down acres of rainforest just because they’re bored. The Space Narcs have a formula that can make anything coated with it indestructible, but not enough of it to actually shield anybody, let alone multiple agents, from getting close enough to destroy the factory without being blown away by its massive laser sentry guns. Skip suggests they coat his jump rope with the formula so he can twirl it to deflect the lasers while the other Space Narcs blow up the factory, and so his jump rope will actually figure into the plot. Because he’s the main character he's given his wish, and because he's the main character his idea works.

But unlike in other brainless, socially-relevant adventure stories, blowing up one extremely obvious source isn’t enough to topple the Keebarian (yes, Keebarian) drug empire. The Space Narcs did find a clue to where to look next, though: the word “GIRTH” and the fact that they tracked Varco’s escape ship to Earth. Being the newest member and thus the one least likely to be recognized, Skip heads to the planet of his parents’ birth to find out the meaning of GIRTH.

So we begin the second book, Survival of the Fit, and with the setup out of the way all remnants of subtlety are lost without a trace. GIRTH turns out to be the name of a huge company that runs a city where everything is automated and most people never leave their homes. Gee, in a book where the hero jumps rope, that can only mean evil’s afoot!

Indeed, as Skip finds out when he infiltrates their headquarters and meets up with a pair of shapely females who were kidnapped for trying to host a workout show on public access (one of whom falls in love with a guy named “Skip” waaaay too readily), GIRTH is under the control of none other than his archenemy Varco the Keebarian drug kingpin! The reason GIRTH doesn’t let anyone get away with being healthy is so they’ll die young and their bodies can be harvested for the impurities a sedentary life inflicts, which it turns out are the secret ingredient in Varco’s evil Space Drug! And the reason he got mad at Skip’s parents, if you care, was because they took such obscenely good care of themselves there was nothing in them to make drugs from. Which leaves us with an absolutely beautiful Space Whale Aesop: exercise regularly and eat right or you’ll be contributing to alien drug trafficking. Good lord.

The blob guy looks about as confused as I was.

And the book manages to get even more insane. Skip proposes to the Space Narcs that he and the girls go back and try to encourage people to get fit. The Space U.N. applauds his devotion but thinks that’ll take too long, Varco will figure out what they’re up to and move his operation somewhere else, and the only viable option to stop him now is to blow up planet Earth for the greater good of the civilized galaxy. Not even the city where they know his headquarters are, the entire frigging planet. Makes me wonder if the other planets who belong to this group worry about what might be going on on their planets that’ll get them blown up.

What are you even pointing at, Skip?

But wouldn’t you know it, the Space Narcs arrested a guy who tried to blow up their ship who turns out to be from the future! And if he takes Skip far enough back to have time to spread the joys of rope-jumping and stave off the need for planetary destruction, he might be able to bargain for a lighter sentence! And after accidentally ending up in the Cretaceous period first because that’s a rule about time-traveling in subpar stories, they finally get to their intended time period, which surprised me a little by still being about 50 years in the future relative to the book’s publication.

I was kind of expecting Skip to come back to the late 20^th century and have his adventures in fitness alongside some normal kids from our time. Such as in some supremely ill-advised programming like Lazer Tag Academy or something.  

Speaking of....

Or worse, that David Fisher might try to evoke some more interest at school assemblies about the joys of jumping rope by claiming to be Skip Roper himself come back to save the world with the power of aerobic exercise. Or maybe even on one of those televised appearances he’s so big on you knowing about.

And despite the promise of another adventure, this is where the saga of the Rope Warrior ends. You almost have to think the author knew that, with how the book ends with the time traveler making another stop to save Skip’s parents too, thus ridding him of any baggage he might’ve had and leaving nothing but his passion for jumping rope. And that’s another problem a lot of these heroes meant to teach messages suffer from: they’re so clean-cut and boring the message they try to encourage seems boring by association. “This guy saves the world from aliens and says I should jump rope? Geek. Let’s go watch the Power Rangers instead, they fight aliens with laser guns and super-cool robots.”

Yes, I'm aware something was stuck to the scanner. It seemed appropriate.

Just from a technical standpoint, the first book feels like the author wanted to shove in every single little idea and detail he came up with, thinking that’d make the limited story it actually tells more gripping. There was a fair bit I didn't mention to keep the summary from bogging down. Like when Skip’s been on the station for years he realizes he’s grown out of his kiddie jumpsuits and goes to put on one of his dad’s. There’s some kind of biological sample in the elbow that melts into Skip’s blood when he puts it on. In both books, we never find out what it did to him.

Also, right after his parents are killed, Skip sees himself on the Mars station’s security cameras and realizes he’s walking around all angry and obsessed like Varco did. He decides he needs to keep his cool and not let anger overtake him. And that’s the last we hear of that. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume the reader’s meant to take away the lesson they shouldn’t let their problems take control of them. But if Skip realizes that and overcomes his problems that quickly, he’s even more dull to read about…

But point being, there’s an awful lot of stuff going on in the first book. It feels very, very busy for a young adult novel. In the second book by comparison, it felt like I was watching an old movie serial most of the time, with lots of little cliffhangers at the ends of chapters. Where some GIRTH security guards shoot into a cardboard box we’re led to believe Skip’s hiding in, and he winces as lead rips through the sides of his hiding spot…except he was actually climbing the wall of the building, and what he was wincing at was one of the guards making a bad joke. When the Keebarians think they’ve tricked Skip into returning to his Space Narc buddies carrying a time bomb, in the next chapter we find out he actually realized his Space Narc identity badge felt kind of heavy and turned the tables on the Space Drug Pushers.

But speaking of the Space Narcs, I’m really worried about them being run by idiots. In the span of the two books we find out they incarcerate their prisoners somewhere the prisoners can see their impounded vehicles, meaning if they were to escape their escorts or cells…yeah. There’s also a rule that any Space Narc can challenge any other Space Narc to combat at any time. This challenge cannot be denied. Not to the death or anything, but what the hell kind of drug-policing body is this??

The rule’s real reason for existing seems to be so a main character gets a chance to prove himself before the Space Narcs when an incredulous senior member doesn’t believe a guy who’s only been in the agency a day should be hearing about all their most important plans. Which, really, Skip probably shouldn’t, but he wouldn’t be involved in the plot if he didn’t. The way the author clumsily plasters over that plot hole it just sounds like the Space Narc administrators are using the contraband substances they confiscate for themselves.

And whatever other problems the series had, the second book almost seems as if it was never proofread. One particularly awful incident shows itself after the heroes find out what the secret ingredient in the villains’ Space Drug is, and the Space U.N. decides they’re too firmly entrenched for any solution to work but the (regrettable) annihilation of planet Earth.

Now, as noted the Space Narcs arrested a guy who turns out to be a time traveler, and Skip and another human Space Narc decide to have him take them back in time along with the girls from the public access workout show. Once in the past, Skip and the girls plan to spread a message of health and fitness to derail the villains’ plan before it can start, and save Earth from destruction.

But that’s when the bad continuity checking kicks in. Skip and his human Space Narc buddy decide not to tell the girls about the Earth being destroyed in their present…but then they immediately do. Yet when they go back in time, a character accidentally voicing his surprise at Earth still being where it’s supposed to proves they actually did go back in time. The idea that Earth wouldn’t be there causes the girls to ask what he meant, and they’re distraught to learn Earth was destroyed. Despite having been told about that before they left.

Like I said at the beginning, I feel a little bad raking these books over the coals. Mostly because the author does seem to believe in his message, and a little bit because he seemed to think the Rope Warrior was going to be huge. In the back of the first book are profiles of a couple of the supporting characters, seemingly meant to go on the back of action figure packages.

There were was even a fan club membership form.

Look at that. The author believed in the Rope Warrior books and their fan club so much he set a date when he’d stop accepting applications, even. Does anybody out there still have one of those posters or newsletters? I’m just so morbidly curious after hearing about this.

But let’s get real. A role model who fights alien drug lords and travels through time…but what you’re supposed to pay attention to is him jumping rope? Was never gonna happen.  Good on the author for his dedication to the merits of jumping rope. But good on whoever made him realize his attempt at a rope-jumping pop culture icon would never happen, too.

Captured by the Engines

It was supposed to be a date like any other. A computer programmer was taking his girlfriend out, until suddenly a black Thunderbird, its radio pelting Beach Boys music into the night, appeared and herded them into an alleyway. The next thing the programmer knew he was looking down at his leg.

Which was on the other side of the alley.

Soon the car’s showing up all over, even appearing on the third floor of a hospital to finish off one of its earlier victims who survived their initial encounter. What is this strange car? Why is it killing people. And how in the hell could it just appear halfway up a hospital building? And why does the scorched rubber of its murderous tires always turn to skin and blood by the time it gets to forensics…?

I know this sounds a lot like a certain Futurama episode, but it actually works pretty well. The descriptions of the violence are fairly macabre. The author also puts some appreciable effort into fleshing out its characters before chucking them in the meat grinder, as it were. Too many other fictional murder sprees don’t really bother, in my experience, and the entire experience suffers for it. Thankfully Captured by the Engines etches its world well. The characters, not just the ones who get run down, are memorable (I found the taciturn medical examiner, and her banter with the local sheriff, to be particularly good), as are the various key locations the story revisits. Like the Pyramid of Cars, which became eerier than you'd expect a pile of rusted old junkers to be.

I won’t say the mystery aspect’s great, since doing a good mystery’s an art that seems to have died off in recent decades, but I found it easy enough to stick with the book to the end.

In fact, the mystery sucks. You’ll have figured out what’s going on long before the characters do. You will. I guarantee it. Hell, you’ve probably already figured it out just from my little summary.

And I caught a couple editorial oversights in my read-through. Like “principle office,” near the end. That one frankly baffles me. I sort was willing to let that go in the books about ReBoot, but that’s because that’s a series with lots of silly wordplay already. This was a story about gruesome vehicular homicides.

But…if you’re willing to give the book and its ideas a chance, you’ll probably come away fairly pleased with it. As I noted it fleshes out its characters and world pretty well. When a street gang named the Desperos was briefly mentioned, I had to stop and think, “Desperos? Like the Despero?”

Because the guy looking into the classic car murders is Batman. Did I mention that? Because he is.

So, yeah. Batman. And the villain of this is an obsessive maniac like most of his. As you’ve already guessed it’s nobody from the comics, but I thought he was a decent villain all the same. Disturbed, but powerful and unique. I found him memorable, and a little frightening.

All in all, a decent if perhaps overly predictable read.

Photon The Ultimate Game On Planet Earth #4: This Is Your Life, Bhodi Li

Once upon a time there was a game called Lazer Tag which you played by pretending to shoot your friends. Competition came in the form of a game called Photon that in addition to being sold as a home game, was also available in nationwide arenas. Any kid who thought they could shoot a gun or had a birthday party was invited to plunk down their money and go all commando in a futuristic battle zone for points.

And to promote the game they came up with a story about a kid who was so good at Photon he was invited by a bunch of aliens to play it for real out in space against a bunch of meaner, uglier aliens called the Arrians (I love how in the pilot he sees one of the Arrians and says “Obviously a bad guy”). It seems there’s a special crystal on every planet in the universe, and every hundred years it needs to be recharged by being shot by a Photon laser gun. If the good guys do it, the planet becomes a verdant paradise. If the Arrians make the shot, it becomes a volcanic wasteland.

This story was distributed in the form of a live-action TV show that makes Mighty Morphin Power Rangers look like a triumph of special effects and realism, and two varieties of novel. The first was a series of six books based on the show penned by comic book writer Peter David, and the other was the one shot Thieves of Light, which took the same characters and setting, but presented them in a slightly more grown-up fashion.

So anyway, our hero Chris Jarvis, or as he’s known out in space, Bhodi Li, is about to rejuvenate another crystal when he and one of his Arrian enemies go over a cliff in their scuffle to be the first to claim the planet. Because for some reason only the bad guys have the benefit of being energy constructs that are sent safely back to their home base upon death (is it a choice between that and freezing time on Earth so nobody notices he was gone?), Bhodi goes splat…

…until he wakes up in a hospital, having been in a coma since some jerk jumped on top of him during a perfectly ordinary, non-lethal game of Photon. Later he tries to go back to the Photon arena to get in touch with his fellow Photon Guardians (a Photon Warrior is someone who thinks you only fight for points and bragging rights, a Photon Guardian is one of the aliens who plays it for real, and a Dark Guardian is someone evil who plays it for real. A plot point asks that you know the difference). Normally a ring he wears flashes to let Chris know his space buddies need him. Then he goes to the local Photon arena and wins the match as a signal for them to beam him up. Yeah. This time, nothing happens. He just wins the game. Good thing crystals never need to be recharged while he’s in school or the arena’s closed for the night. Yeah, maybe his buddies handle things without him when that happens, but there’s only five other guys looking out for the whole universe and none of them appear to have those kinds of restrictions on their availability.

Chris is convinced it’s some kind of Arrian trick, especially after he starts seeing people in his everyday life that look just like the human-appearing people from his time spent as a Photon Guardian. His doctor’s a dead ringer for the evil Mandarr, even down to the real name, and there’s a candy striper who looks like space ninja chick Tivia. Uh-huh. See that woman in yellow and white on the cover? That’s Tivia. Notice how her face is covered? That’s because she comes from a matriarchal society and inferior males like Chris aren’t allowed to see her face.

Chris decides to play along until he finds a way to escape, which he does by telling his bossy gym teacher that he’s stupid and none of this is real before pummeling the guy. And freaking out when he sees a lizard named Leon, like his gravelly-voiced pseudo father figure in the Photon Guardians. And playing Photon to a point even more obsessive than before. Could all of Chris’s adventures have been a dream? I said there’s six books, figure it out yourself.

I’m not familiar with Peter David’s work in comics, but I wasn’t that impressed when he wrote something that would be realized solely with words. The main thing about his style I noticed was he seemed to really like the “head/half a head taller than” description when describing height. It made it sound like he was referring directly to the characters’ model sheets when describing them, which is probably okay in the script for a comic book but no so much in a novel. The rest of the writing was dry and stark, and I never once forgot I was a guy killing time on the train.

His idea of a hip in-joke leaves something to be desired. I remember catching a reference to something out of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (drinks called Gargle Blasters) which was of course treated like it was real in the book’s vast, silly universe, and the time Chris arrived on the corner of Siegel and Shuster Street. Considering the people likely to read a science fiction action adventure book, those were a tad too on the nose for my tastes. And get this: Tivia’s lookalike is named Loretta. Like Loretta Haywood, the actress who played her on the TV show. When his delusions of adventures in outer space are supposed to be based on glimpses of stuff happening around him as he drifted in and out of consciousness. I'm just saying, shouldn't her name be Tina or something like that? Naming her instead after the actress makes no sense and is kinda lazy.

A sticking point I’m surprised got left in occurs when Chris is being psychoanalyzed for his delusions of going into space and saving the universe. The shrink asks whether Chris thinks playing a game where you pretend to be a space commando dehumanizes people and glorifies violence. Chris responds no, because if you don’t play fair, they kick you out. “A Photon Warrior has to be considerate of others.”

The others that he’s running around shooting in a war game. And this is the same guy who would occasionally run around shooting people with a real laser gun. Do the Arrians not count because they don’t actually die (even though Chris and his fellow Photon Guardians would, if they were to be tagged by the meaner, uglier aliens)?

I’m saying if your defense against the game making gun violence seem cool is that you’re not allowed to play unless you play fair, it doesn’t quite fly if the promotional material has unscrupulous bad guys who never suffer lasting consequences for being unscrupulous bad guys.

That’s Photon in a nutshell. Unforgivingly goofy, and in book form you can’t even laugh at the listless combat sequences and horrific special effects. The ultimate game, indeed.